


For Want of a Nail

by Mithrigil



Category: Vagrant Story
Genre: Gen, Ivalice Alliance - Freeform, Post-Canon, Spoilers, apotheosis, straightening history's weave
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-18
Updated: 2009-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-04 14:04:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithrigil/pseuds/Mithrigil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ashley learns how to be a god, from several people who've made a life of the practice. [Spoilers for endgame.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Want of a Nail

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cher](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cher/gifts).



  
**   
For Want of a Nail   
**   
_(par ung seul clou perd on ung bon cheval)_   


  
_   
**12 Leonis, 1349 N.V. (Year of Our Lord Iocus)  
Rue Bunanse, Valnain, 23:31**   
_

Sydney should be free.

That he is not is, doubtless, a matter meriting some consideration. Riot probably does consider it, but, typical of the Riskbreaker—_former_ Riskbreaker, Sydney corrects, smirking as corporeally as this form will allow—Riot betrays nothing more than consternation.

He does not have to ask, _Haunting me, are you?_ but Sydney reads it in him anyway, and responds in kind. "Have you done something that merits a haunting, hound? And here I thought your soul was impervious."

Riot puts up his sword—foolish of him to draw it, when he has so much else in his reserves, but then, that _is_ why Sydney has come to him—and eyes the phantom he perceives before him. His eyes, between the flickers of snowfly and light, betray wry amusement, a surprisingly articulate _It is not the first time that you have been most certainly dead._

"But it _is_ the last," Sydney tells him, and opens his arms. A mass of spectres and secrets though he now be, his arms retain the unnatural shape that Ashley would know: the smooth plate pauldrons that replaced Sydney's shoulders so many years ago, the upper- and fore-arms that flout the vagaries of human anatomy, and each jointless finger come to points that are no less sharp in death. "Incomplete though this death be, it is final."

Of an eyebrow-raise: _And should I be thankful?_

"What, that you might kill me after all? Are you so vexed that your rabbit walked into another man's trap?'

There is no need to read what is at the heart of Riot's scoff. He does not let his guard down, nay, of _course_ not, and closes his eyes and the vacancy of his heart to Sydney as he turns away. The rood on his back—not inverse! Sydney marks with a wry smile of his own—flares and threads with the power that banishment takes, the magic more evident through Riot's black duster and cincher than perhaps he wants it to be. The snowflies that compose Sydney's lips twitter, and perhaps it he had a body that would tickle.

"You betray yourself," he says.

It does not stop Riot from walking away. If Sydney were not certain that his voice had survived death, he might doubt that he'd been heard at all. But he does not doubt, and so he does not warn Riot again.

Instead, he continues, "Heard you not what I and mine have said of you? _He fights with the strength of a brigade,_ I believe, passed through more than two lips and into as many ears. Think you any survivors might whisper the very same into the Cardinal's?"

At the mention of survivors, Riot's left ear twitches. _Go on,_ he means, though he does not stop walking.

Sydney follows, an amalgamation of light that doubtless blurs beneath the storefronts of Valnain. With this much light between Riot and the windows, he casts naught upon the glass. "Three hundred lived in the city's streets when you emerged in the Town Centre. Surely you cannot believe that you have ensured the deaths of all but me."

Riot does stop, there; Sydney smirks to read derision in him, in the stead of wariness. _I gave her jewels and wine,_ he does not say, _and you gave her the boy._

"And what will those do but encumber a woman and child?" Sydney sweeps this form about, lets the snowflies gather before Riot's face, that he might see the laughter in them. "But they are safe and sped along. You shall see them, if you care to, though perhaps not for who they were. I do not speak of our timorous and tactful allies, what few we possess in this joke of a world."

Riot says, _And what merits you refer to you and I as 'we',_ with an eminently economic raise of a single eyebrow. Sydney refrains from praising his subtlety.

"Put up your hands, Riot, and count upon them the Blades whose death you have seen to—and mark of a knuckle for each death the City claimed in its _incompleteness_." Sydney raises his own, to demonstrate and mock, to remind Riot that he too is here, dead without Leà Monde and yet fettered to his successor's side. "And unto that, thorough hunter that you are," he goes on, letting the knives of his fingers flicker in his own light, "are there lives you have not claimed at all?"

To watch Riot continue to deride him should be much more frustrating than it is, given the circumstances. _Do the dead now shamble into Iocus' holiest chambers?_

"No, but the living hobble. _Count,_ Riot; whose corpse have you not seen?"

Riot scoffs again, and walks through Sydney, shouldering and sweeping the snowflies out of the way with one broad arm. But it is not dismissal, Sydney can decipher that much, and the visage of the fourth survivor blares clear—well, black, for she is—in Riot's mind.

Sydney does not have to tell him that his troubles have only begun. He permits himself to dissipate, for now, and threads himself into the hide of Riot's coat, to diffuse the light of the Rood. If the leather shines any more than the streetlights would ordinarily allow, there is no one about to notice.  


_ **The Cardinal's personal residence, Brennt, 23:50** _

Because of her condition, Commander Neesa is not made to kneel before him or God. The Cardinal has stood at many a bedside and many a chaise in life, and he feels no sense of impropriety watching the blood spread on Neesa's abdomen with the effort of disseminating the horrors she has seen. The wound itself is vile, pestilential, threaded with the flesh of the abomination who gave it her, and the Cardinal suspects that he will burn this chaise whether Neesa expires on it or not.

"And Grissom," Neesa goes on, cupping her fingers around the red swell beneath the bandages, "Grissom pursued us until the end. Powerful in life, and more in death, I wager, and he was not the only mage to fall. You have felt that fear, have you not, your Eminence? It is worse, for those who follow your gospel. In the land of my fathers, it is only tragedy if the soul finds a body that is not new. But here, with the light of Iocus and Ajora, where the soul is meant for one life alone, that it not perish with its host—" She coughs, and the Cardinal rests his hand upon her dark brow. "But worse, for Grissom, and all your pity to him; not merely cold, but arisen in himself, to turn against his fellows, to—to exact his own blight upon his own flesh…"

Neesa, the Cardinal recalls, is one of his most impressive soldiers. Converts often are. They prove their devotion with each trial to justify it. That Neesa's faith has not been rent with her flesh is a testimony to its strength, and the Cardinal is proud of her and finds her plight unfortunate. He tells her so. "But is his misery ended, child? Have you seen to his comfort in the arms of God?"

She winces; at pain or dour thought, it is difficult to say. "Tieger stayed back to slay him, your Eminence."

Ah, then it is both.

"He was the one to bid me ahead," she goes on. Her voice is weaker than her sweat. "That his sacrifice may not be in vain, I obeyed him."

"Fear not for your fellow, child," the Cardinal tells her, thumbing Neesa's matted and chalky hair off her brow. "His life has sped you to me, given you a week of breath; the City has fallen and will trap him no longer. Was there aught else you saw in flight?"

Neesa inhales, raged and laboriously; the Cardinal must assure that she does not spend all of herself in the giving of this knowledge, and traces the Rood on her forehead, to begin even as she ends. "The Riskbreaker, Agent Riot. He too survived the quake—"

"Then he, too, will answer, and complete this puzzle—"

"No," she interrupts, and because that outburst is costing the last of her strength, the Cardinal does not reproach her for it. "No, he bore Losstarot upon his back."

The Cardinal cannot stay the chill that passes through his fingers. Instead, he hopes that Neesa is sufficiently numb that she does not feel it. "He is in league with Müllenkamp?"

"Unless he carried the fiend to bring him to trial," she manages. Her fingers are stained with black and gold. "But I do not believe it so."

"And what do you believe, child?"

"That—that the Rood is written on his skin."

The Cardinal hushes her, and murmurs words he hopes she does not understand. Under his fingertips, the light fills her eyes, then leaves them as dark as her skin even before he closes them. The Dark has filled her, and it claims her body, but the snowflies that encompass her knowledge and soul are yet beholden under the Cardinal's hand, and do not scatter. They form a shape not unlike hers, until he curls his hand into a fist; they too contract, as if they are on strings, and turn up with his palm. He encases them, and inquires of them to show him all that Neesa, in her earthly form, could not say. They do.

"—Your Eminence," says the herald knocking beyond the door. "There's been an emergency."

"Then tell it me," the Cardinal says, letting the motion of his mouth and tongue coax the snowflies in. A faint orchid glow flares about him and subsumes.

"Duke Bardorba has been murdered in his bed."  


_ **Junction of Rue Bunanse and Verbena Way, Valnain, 23:59** _

Riot is with Neesa as she dies—with_in_ her, if Sydney corrects himself, the art of kything was the first unearthed in Ashley and persists unbidden—and when he emerges from the vision his eyes are a most beguiling shade of ash white. He uncoils from his kneel beside the lamppost, as if he had been doing naught but tying his shoe. Sydney unwinds and manifests before him, tapping one talon on the other metal palm and only slightly vexed that it does not make a sound. "And how, pray, was the journey down the Cardinal's throat? Most of the men who've made it are decades dead."

The city bells toll mid-night in figures of four, staggered as they swing. Valnain's cathedral is not as impressive as Leà Monde's, destroyed a week ago, nor as near, but its tones still set the town entire a-chime. Riot does the courtesy of rolling his eyes, and as he does the hues of Dark and earth return to them. With them, Sydney reads an unspoken but plainly sardonic _And you would know._ But it is a complex gesture, with Riot still reeling from the rhythm of another, and in it Sydney also marks Riot's concern, his calculation of his own alacrity and might.

As such, Sydney does not mock him. He stands aside, to indicate that Riot should continue in whatever direction he means, and thereafter moves beside him, not walking but alight as the collection of spirits he is. (And it _is_ strange, to move as himself and not hear ever the scrape of armor. He hopes he will not have to grow attuned to it.)

With a pause at the next crossroads, Riot asks, _And what plan are you conniving?_

"Hearken back to your days as a dog of the VKP. What would they have paid you to kill the Cardinal?"

_No man could,_ and that's evident enough.

"But you are no man," Sydney reminds him. He reaches out to palm Riot's back; he misses, the tips of his spectral talons making no breach in the hide.

Riot tosses his head. _I meant no man could pay it,_ that says, with an implicit, _but kill him I could._

"Even now, when he knows of your coming? You are mighty hunter indeed, Riskbreaker—and that is high praise, from the maw of the hare that haunts you." Sydney mocks him now, and thinks he _deserves_ it, "But is not that hare the one to get away?"

_You are yet here,_ Riot says without saying, choosing a direction on the cross-street. It is, perhaps, the wrong one, but are there any right?  


_ **15 Leonis.  
Dense woods, a league east to Ronserbòurg, 08:26** _

Of course Riot does not perform any devotions. How could he know to? He is not a member of the cult, though he has seen (and slain) the proof of its gods. Nevertheless this amuses Sydney, and in three days of all but silence Riot has not once stopped to ask the higher powers what they are at. Perhaps he does not count himself among them.

He has known Ashley Riot by face for ten days and ten days only; the first three were spent running from him, the fourth and fifth carried upon his back, the sixth beside him, the seventh dying in his name, and these last three a phantom over his shoulder. While he cannot say truly that Riot surprises him (beyond the general vacancy of his soul), Sydney can and will admit readily that he has not learned all there is to about his successor.

It would perhaps be more exciting if Sydney were not dead. He imagines (remembers?) that his father watched him take trials with the Dark with a measure of pride and acceptance. Sydney feels an abundance of the former and yet _none_ of the rest.

Perhaps, he considers, it is because Ashley has no cause to try. When first he turned to the service of the Dark, Sydney learned the use of his enchanted arms, but Riot has no such handicap; the loss of his voice matters yet to no one, for Sydney can read his heart and the local violent fauna do not care to converse with him. The man's physical powers leave naught to be desired—in those first three days, he leveled a city entire and laughed its magicks in the face—and this wild world does not require the use of his other gifts. Rather than see ahead, he relies on his human senses; where he might divine, instead he deliberates; all these three nights afield he has pitched camp and started fire with his own hands. Sydney might mistake it for humility, but the truth is that Riot does not know how to be a god.

Sydney laughs to think it. Snowflies bubble out of his mouth and carry that laughter far enough that it might be audible.

But Riot hears it, at least, and looks over his shoulder. His expression is not precisely a glare, but the sentiment it carries would merit one. _If you have no business here beside your laughter, begone._

"Then stay I shall," Sydney returns. "What is a ghost but earthly work undone?"

Riot continues on in the direction of Ronserbòurg, and thereafter apparently even farther East. Sydney does not intend to advise him; the first of these ten days were rendered as interesting as they are by giving the Riskbreaker more bait than instruction. But it _is_ vexing, that he is here perched on the back of the mightiest of heroes, and that hero yet thinks like a mortal man.  


** _Lower Ronserbòurg, 08:30_ **

She does not mean to use her gifts in the marketplace, but the hearts of the vendors are nevertheless laid bare. Perhaps that is why she has been brought, despite the price that, according to the Bill of Markes, is on her head as of a week ago. She inwardly jokes that, for a sum like that, she might well turn herself in.

Her last time in Rosnerbòurg was years ago, for a colloquium. It stands to reason that not only was she a different person then, she never had care or cause to come to the market. The city is walled, but its traders are not, and one can buy what one needs here without taking a step past the fortress walls. They keep to the well-trod and summer-dry ground without; a young acolyte of the cult walks beside her but not in step. Considering that they are to buy enough, they had to send someone strong, but most of the strongest fell in defense of the city, and so this youth is perhaps only a decade older than Joshua, who Callo has left in the care of the cult.

A cart they pass is laden with mirrors and glass, and Callo cannot help but glance at each reflection as it forms. Even those not distorted by tint and curve do not seem like her own; she has not been this thin since University, nor this haggard, nor her hair so unruly that even cloak and cowl will not tame it. She looks like the witch they call her on the bulletin. The hearts of the vendors say the same—_was once she comely?_ one asks himself, and another tsks inwardly, _would that she could afford to groom_. They do not—and need not—know of the jewels and wine that Agent Riot entrusted her with on their parting, nor what good those will bring the cult as a whole.

Today, she purchases the material components of the rites that will bind her to them, for Joshua's protection and her own.

The young man stops by a stand of salted meat and whispers to her, "Take care what you say and see. There is a spy behind your eyes."

She closes them.  


** _Dense woods, less than a league east to Ronserbòurg, 08:32_ **

"Ah, so the hound has caught a scent." Sydney applauds, and really, this lack of sound other than the buzzing of snowflies poses intriguing but _undue_ challenges to his theatricality. "And how is the world through Merlose's eyes this shining morning?"

Riot's eyes, thus far, are still shut, for the first few steps as he plunges forward into the forest. _You did not say she would find your people._

"And whose would claim her?" It seems there is an advantage to this form, and it is that Sydney does not have to side-step the trees as Riot races past them, and thus the ghost shall keep apace.

_You made her a witch._

"The city made her a witch, as it did you, and honestly, Riot, I thought we had achieved a measure of understanding on the matter of the craft."

_My quarrel is not with what she is._ A branch Riot holds aside would have swatted Sydney in the face, and as it stands the gust only scatters the fragments of his seeming.

"You cannot change how she came there," Sydney reminds him. "Or if you can, I do not think you would like what you created. Has the Dark given that gift unto you? Is that a future you have seen? I had not thought the Dark had the sense of humor, to give its vessel the gift of prophecy and take in exchange his voice."

Another branch swipes across where Sydney's mouth would be, and dislodges nothing. Its particular swish says _I would not put it past the gods I have seen._

Sydney thinks, but takes care not to say aloud, that perhaps there is to be a god with an ear for irony.  


**Further woods past Ronserbòurg, 20:06**

Not many remain. Sydney can conjure up the names of all who do, and could count them on hands alone if he had knuckles. Those who survive are those too weak to have fought in the first place; a generation is gone. The watch they set has no far-seer, and if Sydney had a heart its beat would catch, to think of John.

Between that, the dark, and the Riskbreaker's woodcraft, no one marks their approach. Riot walks into the centre of the camp, and stands beside the fire. His shadow swallows all of Sydney's light, and none in the camp shall see him. (Perhaps it would offend the gods somehow.) Those who can sense it are drawn to him, and soon a murmur is taken up as the cultists wake and gather.

Merlose and Joshua come too, out from under a tentflap, Joshua leading her by the hand. Sydney's mouth would sour if he had one, to see the child _so very like_ himself at that age, the abomination of the Duke made manifest. Merlose rushes to Riot where Joshua holds reticent; "Agent Riot," she gasps, pushing to the front of the group and taking down her cowl. "You—"

He hushes her with a blink of his eyes. She can read hearts now, his included, and Sydney hears Riot's grey shade intimate, _I hope you didn't use that name in the market._

"Of course not," she says, frowning—but after a deep breath, she smiles fondly. "There's a price on my head, you know."

_The wine won't pay it?_

"Your pardon, stranger." An elder, Josquin, comes forward. He had been _too_ old, and is probably the most powerful mage remaining in the band, which would explain how he speaks for them now. "What is your errand here?"

It is amid that sound, and all assembled, that Riot takes down the back of his coat, and turns it into the light. The Rood, in its prescribed alignment, blazes to life in his skin, the dark tattooed lines flaring and racing as if the ink is now blood.

"So Sydney is gone from us," so many say, and Sydney wishes that among them, one could speak with the dead.  
**23:18**

"What do you plan to do?" Merlose asks.

Were Merlose not a heart-seer, Riot could not possibly explain. Sydney thinks it almost entertaining to watch them, Merlose's temples throbbing with the strain of scrying, Riot frustrated with his plain inability to speak, and the indignity and inexperience of being read. It's nearly farcical. The man has the most recalcitrant soul, and here, in silence, it must be laid bare.

And so it is painstaking, for Riot to divulge his plan. Sydney would collect wagers on which will win out, Riot's determination or obduracy, but there's no one here to bet.

It is not difficult to disseminate what passed between Sydney and the Duke, and how they both are dead. That works. He attempts to tell Merlose what he saw through Neesa's eyes. That works. And from there, he attempts to explain that he only has two choices, and they are the same as hers; to run or burn. That, also, works.

But to tell Merlose he means to end the Cardinal's hold on the leashes of the Crimson Blades? Perhaps Riot knows it is a futile errand. Or perhaps he would have to explain unto Merlose why, and that, that is inconceivable.

It _is_ a farce, and Sydney could laugh.

"You could stay here and help Sydney's people," Merlose offers. "Help us, I mean."

_Help you run, instead of felling the hunter,_ Riot reminds her. That thought rings clear, and his scoff only serves to emphasize the point. _I know which of those I'm more suited to._

"Perhaps you're right," she says, and Sydney does not have to read hearts to see sarcasm in it. "But none of us are doing now what we _were_ suited to."  


**16 Leonis  
05:14**

In the centre of the camp, beside a fire that has long since gone out, Riot takes care to leave several of his own possessions. Not the jewels, nor the weapons, nor the wine; coils of rope, matches, oil, chalk, wick, salt. These are things that Riot could, and will, easily replace, but the manner of the gesture concerns Sydney.

Nevertheless, he does not ask.  


**North of Reddhen, Sixth High Road, 09:10**

The Cardinal did not sleep well, but then, he rarely does. Within him, here when Riot sees through his eyes, there is a noisome chaos, as if he is internally crowded. Riot takes the obfuscation for its worth, and listens as the Cardinal listens.

He is not alone in this carriage. After these two weeks of a world turned upside-down, Riot is not surprised to see Inquisitor Reninger sitting across from the Cardinal, looking as if he belongs there. Riot hears _strike that outburst from the record_ and its echo _yes, my lord_, and in that moment a great deal becomes clear—in his mind, at least, if not the chaos of the Cardinal's.

Unsurprisingly, as is wont when Riot kythes, he is the topic of discussion. "So the surviving Blade confirms it." Reninger appears somewhat perturbed at the fact. "Agent Riot was the cult's man."

"She is not _surviving_, and I would not say so," the Cardinal corrects with a wave of his hand that seems to be entirely irreverent of how the carriage shakes. "More like he became the cult's man during the siege. They bought him with a power untold, or so I fear."

"Which makes his murder of the Duke even more certain. He carried out Losstarot's will."

(In the recesses of the Cardinal's mind, Sydney muses, _If only you knew._)

"So it would seem," here the Cardinal agrees. "Though for certain the cult is as good as gone, the people were never the source of Losstarot's power, more the accessory to it."

"As with any church."

"You wound me, Inquisitor."

"Is that not Riot's task?" Reninger scowls, and the flesh of his chin jumps as the carriage rolls over a dent in the road. "Once Parliament is gelded, he'll turn on you."

"And here your metaphor wounds deeper."

"Well, if he _is_ continuing Losstarot's work, I think it rather apt."

Riot can feel the Cardinal's smile, curling at the edges like parchment as it burns. "Which is why I ask you here; has Riot any sense?"

"For, if he does, he will quit this table while the stakes are low and the pot is his?" Reninger counters, shutting his eyes before he raises them. Outside, the chocobos trample and caw, and the wagon-wheels roll and chatter on spare gravel. The road itself requires repair. "Agent Riot has through his tenure been the VKP's very avatar. He came to us neither mercenary nor rogue, nor did he harbor delusions of any power of his own. He had no hope to affect change. He fought for no cause, not even the joy or it. He served, as only servants can. He had wit, yea, and sense, but—"

"He had no soul," the Cardinal encapsulates, and that is also an echo.

"After all we have done to him, I should hope not."

"And should he have happened upon one?"

This time, Reninger's eyes stay shut. "Losstarot's?"

"Those soulless, when touched by the craft of the old gods, have a propensity to crave the souls of others," the Cardinal says, and Riot understands.

When Reninger opens his eyes, he does not have to say aloud, _and you would know._  


**North and now East of Ronserbòurg, 09:18**

"He lies," Sydney says, when Riot has come out of it.

Riot, who had fallen to one bent knee, does not seem to heed this at all. He straightens, and continues westward.

Sydney goes on, "Not about himself, of course. If you could not feel that, I'd doubt my very choice. But you, your state is but his speculation."

Once on his feet, Riot continues to ignore Sydney, pushing himself along the forest path as if none of the last ten minutes had transpired at all. Sydney follows.

"But, official of Iocus though he be, he does not lie exclusively," Sydney goes on, sweeping to gather in front of Riot and, if not block him, stay him at least. "Were you to challenge him, I cannot speak for what soul you do possess."

There are no branches on this path for him to let swat into to Sydney's face, but Riot does his best to dismiss him in other impolitic ways. Sydney is nearly frustrated enough to remind him that he has dispelled countless phantoms with Grimoires and silver, and that they yet remain at his disposal.

"The gods did give me the gift of prophecy, you know. One would think you'd trust my advice."

Riot does not have to remind Sydney that he is dead. He does, regardless.

As such, Sydney does not have to remind Riot that he _planned_ that.  


**17 Leonis  
The Ring Dragon Inn, New Souçen, 02:06**

Riot sleeps, if it can be called that. It is not the first time Sydney has beheld, nor _watched_, this display, but he continues to take some amusement in how fitful a sleep it is. Should not a man unlevied by mortal concerns sleep the sleep of angels? Honestly, Riot sleeps more like a squirrel.

But Sydney, dead as he is, sleeps neither completely nor at all, and passes eternal minutes reading the Riskbreakers heart. It is shallow sleep, for a man who does not dream. Were Sydney sufficiently corporeal to rock this chair, or whet his fingers against one another, Riot would wake in an instant and probably attempt to kill him with whichever of the six weapons was closest at hand and took the least mind to aim. Never mind that this is Inn is upon hallowed ground, once a wellspring in itself, the site of a world's end by hungry, indiscriminate mist—and on such ground, the dead are given power.

With that power, Sydney comes to Riot's body, casting more light than shadow over it. His feet make no overture on the floor, his arms and fingers silent as if greased. With a whispered word to the gods who keep him here beyond abomination, he reaches out one palm and coaxes the air to have Riot roll over and bare his back.

In this state, the Rood is but a mark, intricate lines of black and swathes of orange and gold, worth no more note than a braggart's brand. Sydney stoops to touch it, run his knives over the ink, and the spectral tips pass harmless through Riot's skin, disappearing within him. Sydney of course feels nothing, but the sight is disturbing and thrilling in its own right.

He spends hours this way, idly tracing the paths of the Rood, augmenting it, leaving no slice or stain.  


**The Sixth High Road, past New Souçen, 19:02**

"I had not thought so," Reninger is saying from within the carriage, and laughter follows it, louder than the chocobo's studded talons on the mortared road. "What, you think they mean to amass?"

"Did you see Sydney die?"

"Nay."

"Then they mean to amass," the Cardinal says, "as fruitfully as they may. All these cults are a pestilence, Inquisitor. You need only spare what we need to keep the fear of the True God in the good people."

A chocobo shrieks, and the carriage topples with it, a terrific sound of splintering wood and the flapping of impotent feathers. The wagon is dashed on the road, and the Cardinal and Reninger tangle as they try to leave the wreckage. The Cardinal goes first to the chocobos, and finds the nails that plated the beasts' talons _molten_, the metal steaming and charring the great bird's flesh. Reninger, at least, asks after the coachman and footmen, coughing as he staggers free.

Riot does not tell him, _they are not here._

In fact, Riot does not tell the man much of anything that a level bowgun cannot say for him.

The Inquisitor is armed, of course. Riot will wait until Reninger makes a move before shooting him. (Sydney remarks inwardly on the irony of certain mistakes that the Riskbreaker has since made and here makes again.) And of course Reninger knows this, and raises his arms (the parallels, Sydney almost chokes to consider), saying, "Agent Riot. I don't presume you're here to turn yourself in."

His only answer is a crank of the bowgun's winch.

The Cardinal straightens from amid the wreckage, his trappings in dust and disarray but still rich enough to shine, as if they have sucked some light from the stars. "Do you expect my thanks?" he asks, and it almost seems earnest. "You eliminated a rival, yea, but I had not thought you would do so opportunistically."

It is left to Sydney to read what the Cardinal and Reninger cannot hear. Riot's eyes are blaring at a level of indignation Sydney knows well, from his own manipulation of the Riskbreaker's heart. The power that threads him, winds through his flesh and clothes, is not that of a soulless automaton, not at this moment.

Sydney half-expects someone to ask that Riot show his soul.

What the Cardinal does instead, Riot is prepared for. The words of a Spirit Surge are on the Cardinal's lips, and in the moment Riot looks away to mark that, Reninger draws sword—

—and dies with a bolt in his head.

Riot casts the crossbow aside rather than reload it, uncouples the shield from his hip, and lifts it just in time to face the magic. The burst of concentrated light around him _does_ outstrip the stars, thick enough for Riot's sword to slice through. He rushes the Cardinal, a black arc of force and the hide of his coat, and lands slice after slice, his body and blade sapping strength from the spilt blood. The Cardinal's cowl tatters, he can't get a word in, but surely Riot knows how little damage he's done here?

The chain breaks, and Riot reels back, raising his shield. Sydney can hear the pounding of Riot's heart, could probably feel it in the earth. The concentrated attack has made Riot vulnerable, and all still standing know it.

But the Cardinal does not counter him.

The cuts begin to mend, but not with the healing light of a Grimoire; the Cardinal is stained but not shaken, and looks up into Riot's eyes.

"You have fought someone of this like before, Agent Riot," the Cardinal says, without the smirk that Sydney had once used to tell him to put more stock in faerie-tales. "As the Dark claimed Sydney—and now you? oh, the vagaries of God—the Light has made me its avatar. I do not think you know what it means to face and defeat me."

Had Sydney still breath, he would be holding it now.

Riot puts up his sword, but not his shield.

The Cardinal inclines his head, and lets his casting hand down. "I am thankful for your prudence. There is a balance to this world, after all, and you have disrupted it enough."

Riot informs the Cardinal as politely as he can that _Your deception and my disruption both toward that end._

The Cardinal does not read his heart.  


**18 Leonis  
Under the same sky, now empty, 00:03**

"So you see now how ill-advised it is, to resort to your usual methods of mending the world's weals."

And Riot very nearly says aloud, _Then why did you choose me?_

"You could _learn_ that, Riskbreaker." Sydney compels the snowflies to smile for him. Riot turns away.  


**20 Leonis  
The woods past Ronserbòurg as prior, 21:02**

They decamp tomorrow; as such, all is packed and bundled save the tents they sleep in. Word of the attempt on Cardinal Batistum has reached the city, and what reaches the city reaches the markets, and Josquin fears that the cult will be blamed. Callo agrees with his plan to take to the woods with all they can bear, and not tarry any longer.

She realizes that this is the end of her life entirely.

Perhaps within the month, when they are far enough from the city that she, too, can forget what life she came from, she will ask to be consecrated, and pledge herself to their service. They have been kind to her, and she has always had one foot in the graves of supposed heretics—and if not for her sake, as a new-spawned witch in a world made drunk on its own enlightenment, then for Joshua, who needs her to survive. She recalls how John came to be among them—Sydney, more precisely than aught else—and wonders if it is possible to lead such a life, with only the memory of a leader to serve. Perhaps Joshua will become that leader someday. What has the Dark given unto him?

Through the walls of her tent, a shadow blights the fire. His posture informs her, _Raise no alarm,_ and so she does not; she leaves tent as surreptitiously as she is able, and comes to where some other few have gathered, as a week's nights past, to see who is now among them.

Riot stands over crates of stakes and netting and knives, bolts of canvas and wool, jars of paper and ink and medicine, bundles of swords. How he came by all of it, Callo doesn't dare ask—at least not here—and how he bore it all here, she would truly care to know. His grey shade says nothing on the matter, though he looks her in the eyes, over the lapping flames.

"They say the Dark itself has taken your voice," Josquin says, without having to explain who _they_ are.

Riot does not nod, but closes his eyes and lets the lids complete the gesture.

Josquin raises an eyebrow to counter that. "The gods cannot mean for you to lead us. How are you to speak to them on our behalf? How are you to increase our numbers that we may survive to serve you?"

The motion that follows is almost too quick to see at all; Riot turns aside, and there is _Sydney_ in his place. The illusion is complete, from the golden hair to the silver talons, though with Riot's countenance and posture (which do not suit Sydney at all). Sydney—through Riot—tsks, and asks Josquin directly, "How are you to serve me without faith?"

In the moment before the apparition flares back to Riot, Callo feels Joshua grab fretfully onto her thigh. She reaches down to pat the boy's hair, and sees, beside her, that the child is not the only one yearning for Sydney's return. Others reach forward as if to cling to him, as if to keep him in this world. But Sydney is gone, and Riot remains, implacable and dark where Sydney once gleamed.

"What should we call you?" Josquin asks for the cult, as stunned as they.

Riot kneels, and scoops up a handful of ashes from beneath the central fire. Without rising, he extends his hand through the flames, and they part for him, snarling around his arm but not burning him, not catching on his coat. The ashes trickle down into Josquin's waiting palms, and Callo cannot be the only one who sees them quaking.

When all the ash that can fall has done, Riot's palm is still stained. He presses his palm to Josquin's cheek, and leaves a black print on the man's flesh. That done, he withdraws, and walks out of the fire, with only one more nod to Callo ere he is gone.

_I will not lead you,_ he does not have to say. _But I am a hunter, and apt to follow._

-

  
_(one broken nail loses a good steed)_

\-----------------------


End file.
